Can Car manufacturing techniques reform health care?
Kaplan was impressed. What he saw, “was what’s possible: that you can create products with no defects; you can have exactly what you need when you need it—and no more and no less—and have that happen every single time. It was the antithesis of what you see in health care.”
As it was implemented, they discovered over 50% of their efforts added no value to the process. “...says “muda” (waste) is everywhere in the US health-care system. “You look around a hospital, and what you see are people waiting”, Black says. “Patients are waiting for doctors; doctors are waiting for patients. Patients waiting, like excess inventory piling up on an assembly line, are a sign that services are not flowing.”
They reduced surgical equipment by 60% (40,000 fewer items to decontaminate); and distances patients had to travel was reduced from 1300 feet to 126 feet.
Past attempts to apply business-management techniques to health care have been limited to small individual processes like pharmacy inventory. But using 6-Sigma management techniques brought overwhelming improvement.
Effect of Patient Arrival time on Overall Wait Time
Late patients & over booking decreased the overall efficiency of the clinic – Lack of efficiency leads to medical errors. Also discusses need for automation.
Use of Patient Flow Analysis (PFA) to improve Patient visit efficiency
PFA measures time spent in each phase of the clinical visit & is crucial to uncovering redundancies & inefficiencies during patient visits. Includes discussions and examples.
Improving Efficiency, Quality & the Doctor-Patient Relationship
Ideal practices build quality measurement into patient interactions in order to fully meet the patients needs and to enhance the doctor-Patient relationship. This lowers overhead, gives more time to physician interaction with patient & greatly reduces medical errors.
Application of Lean Thinking in Health Care
UK is forced to do something about Emergency Room inefficiencies & solves it through Lean Management Principles – 6 Sigma. Flexibility is key to providing efficiency as patient patterns are prone to change
Best Health Care getting better with Lean
Mayo Clinic was doing good – But decided to do better by adding the benefits of lean manufacturing principles 6-Sigma. The results were impressive – Actually cutting total patient process time in half; quadrupling their volume & providing better quality health care! Includes some examples of Value-Stream-Maps.
Dentist Drills down to cause of Office Waste
Success discovered in using the Toyota Way 6 Sigma system. Study shows many actual examples of his process.
John Toussaint, MD, former CEO of ThedaCare, and Roger A. Gerard, PhD, its chief learning officer, candidly describe the triumphs and stumbles of a seven-year journey to lean healthcare – Except from “On the Mend”
NOTE: ThedaCare is among the nations most “most wired” and computer-savvy, health care institutions!
John Toussaint, MD, former CEO of ThedaCare, and Roger A. Gerard, PhD, its chief learning officer, candidly describe the triumphs and stumbles of a seven-year journey to lean healthcare – Except from “On the Mend”
Institute for Health Care Improvement speaks about 6-Sigma & the amazing results at Virginia Mason Hospital & ThedaCare.
Health Care Current State Example
Example of a template that visualizes the Value Stream
Example of performance measures in a clinical lab
Toyota Assembly Line Inspires Improvement in Hospitals
Washington Post article
What “Patient Centered” should mean
The primary focus of 6-Sigma Lean Processing is to serve the customers needs. Patient Centeredness results in the virtual elimination of mistakes.
Toyota-Style management drives Virginia Mason
Another awesome story, this one published in Management Trends, about Virginia Mason utilizing 6-Sigma Lean Processing techniques and the astonishing results!
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